The Specs On This 1970 IBM Mainframe Will Remind You Just How Far Technology Has Come

We were especially intrigued by
this 1970 press release singing the praises of System/370
Model 145, a mainframe computer that was state of the art at the
time of its inception. It had 500 KB of RAM, 233 megabytes of
hard disk space, and ran at 2.5 MHz. It took up an
entire room.

Nowadays, this computer would be able to store a small collection
of photos and (slowly) access them. Not much else! You could
double its 32,000 characters of control storage to 64,000
by "using a portion of
main memory, if needed, to accommodate optionally available
functions."

Adjusted for inflation, this computer would cost you between $4.3
million and $10.8 million in today's dollars, depending on the
options you selected.

Nowadays, the smartphone in every millenial's pocket is at least
1,000 times faster, and the most basic iPhone can store 80 times
the data.